Europe's aviation safety watchdog today, called for the life of black box flight recorders to last 3 times as long, as the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane yields no results.

In a statement, the European Aviation Safety Agency urged "the extension of the transmission time of underwater locating devices fitted on flight recorders from 30 days to 90 days.

The black box refers to the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder on planes, which are crucial in determining what triggered a plane crash but can be very difficult to locate, as has been the case with the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared at sea on March 8th carrying 239 people.